Byte-Sized Omics

Mario F. Bisconti

Experienced bioinformatician writing about computational biology news, tutorials, and surviving bioinformatics one pipeline at a time.

Mapping with Confidence: A Beginner’s Guide to Reference-Based Assembly

14 minute read

When you have a good reference genome, reference-based assembly is often the most efficient way to make sense of your sequencing data. In this post, we’ll wa...

Reference-Based vs De Novo Assembly: Choosing the Right Approach

3 minute read

Genome assembly can be tackled in two main ways: aligning reads to a reference genome, or building an assembly from scratch (de novo). Both strategies are po...

Short Reads vs Long Reads: What’s the Difference and Why It Matters

6 minute read

Not all sequencing technologies are created equal. If you’ve ever wondered why some people swear by Illumina and others rave about Oxford Nanopore or PacBio,...

Terminally Chill: Getting Comfortable with the Command Line

3 minute read

The command line can feel intimidating when you’re new. But trust me, it doesn’t have to be. In fact, getting comfortable with the terminal is one of the bes...

Conda? Mamba? Docker? Figuring Out Package Management Without Losing Your Mind

2 minute read

Ever tried installing a tool, only to break your entire setup in the process due to conflicting dependencies? Luckily, you don’t need to suffer. Let’s talk a...